Wait, what? This is what Paige Thomas said in defense of her performance of Britney Spears’ “Everytime” on the show at the start of Thursday night’s “X Factor” USA results show, and things really went downhill from there. If you thought that the sad, dreary feeling from the performance show Wednesday night was going to be lifted early on here, it wasn’t. An incredibly nice gesture designed to give back to a school was tarnished a bit by the product placement for Best Buy, and when the lucky choir from this school came out to perform with the contestants, they were all given the depressing song choice of Coldplay’s “Fix You.”

Then, there was at least a graceful exit courtesy of Arin Ray, who had to see this coming following his awkward and bizarre performance on “Hero” this week. He smiled, he took it well, and then he was gone after the show never managed to figure out what sort of artist he was. Following this we were almost glad to see Cher Lloyd since she sang something positive.

Now, a warning: the following is a rant about Beatrice Miller going home over CeCe Frey. It’s not fair to generalize teenage contestants, but we had this same problem with Rachel Crow’s elimination on the show last year: it’s not fun to watch 13-year olds sob on stage. It’s just not. It’s uncomfortable, and you could see that CeCe felt terrible about the fact that she was even competing against Beatrice to begin with. We usually try to analyze the sing-offs, but there’s nothing fun about watching someone cry their way through a song. This show is just too loud, too brash, and too intimidating for these sort of contestants, and so long as “The X Factor” has them, this show will never be as entertaining as its counterparts. The British version has a higher age limit, and it should be adopted here.

Now that the rant is over and we’ve seen Beatrice leave as a sobbing mess, we now come to ranking the top 8.

8. CeCe Frey (of course)

7. Fifth Harmony (ouch, that low?)

6. Paige Thomas (which she has to be happy with just as an improvement)

5. Diamond White (which seems about right)

4. Emblem3 (the masters of hanging in there)

3. Vino Alan (otherwise known as the man who can’t be moved)

2. Tate Stevens (which is the first change in the rankings for him)

1. Carly Rose Sonenclar

So why the change? It’s simple: Carly had the final spot on last night’s show, while Tate was forced to perform in the less-than-lucrative lead-off spot.